Religion and Spirituality:

Strangers, Rivals, or Partners?

Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM
I. INTRODUCTION
The problem I want to discuss with you this evening is particularly
acute, if not peculiar to, contemporary first world Western culture. It
is, like many of our cultural problems such as inclusivity, addictions,
and family breakdown, ironically a product, to a large extent, of our
unprecedented abundance, leisure, and freedom. The problem is the
relationship between religion and spirituality.
Familiar statistics detail the decline of the mainline Protestant
churches even though fundamentalist denominations and Roman
Catholicism are growing numerically.1 Nevertheless, Catholic "prac-
tice" or institutional participation (in the sense of going to church,
espousing Church teaching, observing Church laws, or referring to
the clergy for guidance) is much less widespread than in the past and
Catholics are much more likely to be involved in what was once called
"indifferentism" or the relativizing of exclusivist claims for Catholicism
as the unique path to salvation." In other words, although the majority
of Americans claim some religious affiliation and religion is apparently
a permanent feature of American culture, religion as a powerful infl u-
v ence in individual or societallife seems to be in serious trouble."
On the other hand, spirituality has rarely enjoyed such a high
profile, positive evaluation, and even economic success as it does among
Americans today. Publishers and bookstores report that spirituality is a
major focus of contemporary writing and reading." Workshops on
every conceivable type of secular and religious spirituality abound.
Retreat houses are booked months and even years in advance. Spiritual
renewal programs multiply and spiritual directors and gurus of various
stripes, with or without some kind of accreditation, have more clients
than thev can handle. Soiritualitv has even become a serious concern
.I .L J
, of business executives, in the workplace, among athletes, and in the
entertainment world. Spirituality as a research discipline is gradually
being recognized in the academy as a legitimate field of study. In
short, if religion is in trouble, spirituality is in the ascendancy and the
irony of this situation evokes puzzlement and anxiety in the religious
establishment, scrutiny among theologians, and justification among
those who have traded the religion of their past for the spirituality of
their present.
The justification of intense interest in spirituality and alienation
from religion is often expressed in a statement such as, "I am a spiritual
1
person (or on a spiritual journey), but I am not very religious."5
Interestingly enough, and especially among the young, this religionless
. spirituality often freely avails itself of the accoutrements of religion.
Invocation of angels, practices such as meditation or fasting, personal
and communal rituals, the use of symbols and sacramentals from vari-
ous traditions such as incense and candles, crystals, rainsticks, vest-
ments, and religious art are common. Indeed, even the most secular
types of spirituality seem bound to borrow some of their resources
from the religious traditions they repudiate.
Finally, our era is marked by an unprecedented contact and inter-
change among religions, not only ecumenical contact with fellow
Christians but genuinely inter-religious encounters among the three
monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and between
them and the other great world religions." These contacts run the
gamut from serious interfaith encounter through dialogue and shared
practice? even to the point of disciplined "crossing over'" to naively
disrespectful "raiding" of other traditions by spiritual dabblers who
appropriate interesting objects or practices from religions not their
own. Whatever else can be said, it is no longer the case in the first
world that most people are initiated from childhood into a family
religious affiliation and remain within it for a lifetime, never seriously
questioning its validity and, in turn, passing it on to their own off-
spring. These religious developments in our culture affect all of us, in
one way or another, personally and/or through our children or students.
The subtitle of this lecture suggests three possible models for the
relationship between religion and spirituality. First, there are those who
consider the two as separate enterprises with no necessary connection.
; Religion and spirituality are strangers at the banquet of transcendence
who never actually meet or converse. This is surely the position, on
the one hand, of our contemporaries who respect the religious involve-
ments of others but are simply not interested in participating in it
themselves, or of those, on the other hand, who consider correct and
faithful religious practice quite adequate to their needs without any
superfluous spirituality trimmings. Second, some consider religion and
spirituality as conflicting realities, related in inverse proportion. The
more spiritual one is, the less religious and vice versa. The two are
rivals for the allegiance of serious seekers. This is the position, on the
one hand, of many who have repudiated a religion that has hurt them
or who simply find religion empty, hypocritical, or fossilized and, on
the other hand, of those whose dependence on religious authority is
threatened by spirituality which does not ask clerical permission or
accept official restraints in its quest for God." Finally, some see religion
2
and spirituality as two dimensions of a single enterprise which, like
i body and spirit, are often in tension but are essential to each other.
In other words, they see the two as partners in the search for God.
I The last is the position for which I will argue in what follows. But
I do not plan to do so from a dogmatic position or for apologetic reasons.
Rather, by describing with some nuance both religion and spirituality,
I will try to uncover both the real and the ersatz sources of tension
between them and then suggest how a contemporary person who takes
seriously the spiritual quest on the one hand and the real resources
and problems of religion on the other can situate herself or himself
in our religiously pluralistic environment with integrity, freedom, and
responsibility.
II. SPIRITUALITY
Many today would argue that spirituality is the more important of the
two terms, religion being a form (if not a Procrustean bed) of spiritu-
ality. In fact, the priority assigned to either religion or spirituality in
relation to the other depends on the level on which one is discussing
each term. At its deepest level each is prior and the question of priority
becomes a classical chicken-and-egg conundrum. But in contemporary
experience, I would argue, spirituality has a certain priority so I will
discuss it first.
A. Spirituality as an Anthropological Constant
In its most basic or anthropological sense, spirituality, like personality,
is a characteristic of the human being as such. It is the capacity of per-
I sons to transcend themselves through knowledge and love, that is, to
reach beyond themselves in relationship to others and thus become
more than self-enclosed material monads. In this sense, even the new-
born child is spiritual while the most ancient rock is not. But we usually
reserve the term "spirituality" for a somewhat developed relationality
to self, others, the world, and the Transcendent, whether the last is
called God or designated by some other term. Although spirituality
is not necessarily Christian or Catholic, and I will be making some
appropriate distinctions below, my concern, in view of the context of
this lecture, is primarily Catholic Christian spirituality.
Spirituality as a developed relationality (rather than a mere capac-
ity) is not generic. We distinguish among spiritualities according to
various criteria. For example, we may distinguish qualitatively between
a healthy and a rigid spirituality. We may distinguish spiritualities by
religious tradition or family as Catholic or Benedictine. Or we may
distinguish spiritualities by salient features, e.g., as Eucharistic or
3
feminist. These distinctions are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
A healthy spirituality may be Catholic, Benedictine, Eucharistic,
and feminist. Conversely, a rigid spirituality may also be Catholic,
Benedictine, Eucharistic, and feminist. In short, although all humans
: are spiritual in the basic anthropological sense, and all Christian spiri-
tualities share a deep cornmonality, each individual develops her or
his spirituality in a unique and personal way, analogously to the way
individuals develop their common humanity into a unique personality.
Therefore, the spiritualities of Christians, even within the same denom-
ination, religious order, or movement, may differ enormously.
B. Spirituality as Life Project and Practice
What, then, is this unique and personal synthesis, denoted by the
term "spirituality?" Peter Van Ness, a professor of religion at Columbia
University who has specialized in the study of nonreligious or secular
spirituality, defines spirituality as "the quest for attaining an optimal
I relationship between what one truly is and everything that is."IO By
"everything that is" he means reality apprehended as a cosmic totality
and by "what one truly is" he means all of the self to which one has
attained. In other words, spirituality is the attempt to relate, in a
positive way, oneself as a personal whole to reality as a cosmic whole.
This definition is broad enough to include both religious and secular
I spiritualities.
In my own writings I have offered a somewhat more specified
definition that may serve our purposes. I define spirituality as "the
experience of conscious involvement in the project of life integration
through self-transcendence toward the ultimate value one perceives."lI
Like Van Ness, I have tried to define spirituality broadly enough that
the definition can apply to religious and nonreligious or secular spiri-
tualities and specifically enough that it does not include virtually
anything that anyone espouses.
The adjective "spiritual" was coined by St. Paul, who used it to
denote that which is influenced by the Holy Spirit of God (for exam-
ple, "spiritual persons" [l Corinthians 2: 13, 15J or "spiritual blessings"
[Ephesians 1:3; Romans 15:27]) and the substantive, "spirituality,"
.derives from that adjective. However, although "spiritual" originated as
la Christian term;" spirituality, in the last few decades, has become a
[generic term for the living of the human capacity for self-transcendence,
! regardless of whether that experience is religious or not. In other words,
, spirituality has lost its explicit reference to the influence of the Holy
)Spirit and come to refer primarily to the activity of the human spirit.
The term has even been applied retrospectively to the classical Greeks
4
and Romans and other ancient peoples who certainly would not have
applied the term to their own experience." Without going into the
arguments for or against this expansion in the application of the terms
"spiritual" and "spirituality," I suggest that we have to recognize the
linguistic fact that neither religion in general nor Christianity in par-
ticular any longer controls the meaning and use of the terms. This
being the case, we need to unpack the general definition in order to
clarify the meaning of the term as it is being used today and then
show how Christian spirituality involves a specification of this general
definition.
First, spirituality as we are using it in this definition denotes
Iexperience, a term that is itself very difficult to define. In this context,
however, it implies that spirituality is not an abstract idea, a theory,
'
an ideology, or a movement of some kind. It is personal-lived reality
that has both active and passive dimensions.
Second, spirituality is an experience of conscious involvement in a
lproject, which means that it is neither an accidental experience such as
the result of a drug overdose, nor an episodic event such as being over-
whelmed by a beautiful sunset. It is not a collection of practices such
as saying certain prayers, rubbing crystals, or going to church. It is an
ongoing and coherent approach to life as a consciously pursued and
\ ongoing enterprise.
I Third, spirituality is a project of life-integration, which means that
it is holistic, involving body and spirit, emotions and thought, activity
and passivity, social and individual aspects of life. It is an effort to
bring all of life together in an integrated synthesis of ongoing growth
and development. Spirituality, then, involves one's whole life in rela-
\ion to reality as a whole.
Fourth, this project of life-integration is pursued by consistent
selftranscendence toward ultimate value. This implies that spirituality
lis essentially positive in its direction. A life of narcissistic egoism, self-
1 1 1- 1 1 1 1 1
destructive addrction, or sociai violence, even tnougn It may Involve
the totality of the person's being, is not a spirituality. The focus of
self-transcendence is value that the person perceives as ultimate not
only in relation to oneself but in some objective sense. One might
perceive life itself, personal or social well-being, the good of the earth,
justice for all people, or union with God as ultimate value. Sometimes,
of course, the perception of ultimate value is mistaken. We have seen
tragic examples of this in cults such as Heaven's Gate." What presents
I itself as spirituality, in other words, requires discernment.
Remembering that, in the concrete, there is no such thing as
generic spirituality, let us now apply this general definition of spiritu-
5
ality to the specific tradition of Christianity. Here we are dealing with
an explicitly religious spirituality in which the horizon of ultimate
value is the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ, in whose life we share
)through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Christian spirituality is the life of
'faith, hope, and love within the community of the Church through
which we put on the mind of Christ by participating sacramentally
and existentially in his paschal mystery. The desired life-integration is
personal transformation in Christ, which implies participation in the
transformation of the world in justice for all creatures.
Christian spirituality, then, is Christian because of the specifi-
cation of the general features of spirituality by specifically Christian
lcontent: God, Trinity, Christ, Spirit, creation, Church, paschal
mystery, sacraments, and so on. However, Christians share the funda-
mental reality of spirituality with other traditions such as Hinduism,
Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, judaisrn, and native traditions. Some of
these traditions, such as Judaism and Hinduism, are specifically reli-
gious, that is, theistic, in that they identify deity as the horizon of
ultimate value. Others, like Taoism and Buddhism, are analogous to
religions in that the horizon of ultimate value is absolutely transcen-
dent although not identified as a personal God. There are other spiri-
tualities that are implicitly or explicitly nonreligious in that they
recognize no transcendent reality, nothing beyond the cosmos as
naturally knowable. And finally, some spiritualities, e.g., feminist or
ecological spiritualities, have both religious and nonreligious forms."
Ill. RELIGION
With this basic understanding of spirituality as a dimension of human
being that is actualized in some people as a life project and practice,
we can turn now to a consideration of religion.
A. Three Levels of Religion
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may well be accepted on one level and repudiated on another by the
same person at the same time. At its most basic, religion is the funda-
mental life stance of the person who believes in transcendent reality,
however designated, and assumes some realistic posture before that
ultimate reality. Religion in this most basic sense involves a recognition
of the total dependence of the creature on the source or matrix of being
and life, which gives rise to such attitudes and actions as reverence,
gratitude for being and life and all that sustains it, compunction for
failure to live in that context in a worthy manner, and reliance on the
transcendent for help in living and dying. In this sense, religion is at
6
the root of any spiritual quest that is not explicitly atheistic or reduc-
tively naturalistic. However vaguely they may define the Ultimate
Reality, or however antagonistic toward organized religion they might
be, most people speaking of spirituality are religious in this most
basic sense.
Second, religion can denote a spiritual tradition such as Christianity
or Buddhism, usually emanating from some foundational experience
of divine or cosmic revelation (e.g., Jesus' experience of divine filiation
or the Buddha's enlightenment) that has given rise to a characteristic
way of understanding and living in the presence of the numinous.
Most people are born into such a tradition remotely in their home
culture and often proximately in their family of origin. For example,
whether or not they go to church or synagogue or know much about
the doctrines of Christianity or judaism, most North Americans oper-
ate within a framework that is traditionally judeo-Chrisrian.
Separating oneself completely from the religious tradition of one's ori-
gin and/or culture is actually extremely difficult and requires consider-
able intellectual effort even for those who have chosen another tradi-
tion or deliberately rejected all traditions. Thus, even people who
claim to have rejected religion in favor of spirituality probably con-
tinue to operate to some degree in relation to a religious tradition, if
only by way of contrast. This might come to expression, for example,
in an explicit modeling of one's life on Jesus even if one no longer
goes to church or checks "Catholic" on a census form. It may even
express itself in the version of "God" that the resolute agnostic rejects!
Third, the term "religion" can denote a religion or institutionalized
formulation of a particular spiritual tradition such as Missouri Synod
Lutheranism, Soto Buddhism, Roman Catholicism, Reformed judaism,
and so on. Religion as institutionalized tradition, as those who spe-
cialize in its study tell us, is a notoriously difficult term to define."
Traditionally, and probably in the popular imagination, a religion is
identified as an institutionalized system of relating with God or gods,
leading to salvation either in this life or another life. However, as
scholars have studied societies in the concrete, they have discovered
that religion in many cultures is not a separate institution distin-
guished from parallel institutions such as the political, economic, or
educational but that these dimensions of group life are embedded
inseparably in the culture as a whole. Furthermore, not all the cultural
systems we would identify as religious involve belief in God. For
example, Buddhism and Taoism, which are certainly analogous to
Hinduism or Christianity as paths of salvation, both totally permeate
their respective cultures and are nontheistic. What seems to mark reli-
7
gions in the concrete is that they are cultural systems for dealing with
ultimate reality, whether or not that ultimate reality is conceptualized
as God, and they are organized in particular patterns of creed, code,
and cult.
First, they are cultural systems. They are institutionalized patterns
of belief and behavior in which certain global meanings, usually based
on some kind of foundational revelation or revelatory insight, are
socially shared. So, for example, Christianity holds certain global
convictions based on the judeo-Christian revelation of God through
Jesus which embrace our relationships with self, other human beings,
and the world.
Second, religions are concerned with whatever a society or group
considers ultimately important, however that is defined. This may
involve placating dangerous deities or pleasing benevolent ones; assur-
ing fertility or victory in war; honoring ancestors or achieving enlighten-
ment. In Christianity what is ultimately important is salvation, which
involves both personal union with God, now and for all eternity, and
the transformation of all creation in Christ.
Third, religions are culturally institutionalized in the form of
creed, or what the group believes about the nature and functioning of
personal, cosmic, and transcendent reality; code, or what the group
holds to be obligatory or forbidden in order to live in accord with
ultimate reality; and cult, or how the group symbolically expresses its
dependence upon ultimate reality whether that be a personal God, the
cosmos itself as sacred, the ancestors, or some other transcendent or
quasi-transcendent reality. In some way, religions are about the socially
mediated human relationship to the sacred, the ultimate, the transcen-
dent, the divine. These are not strictly equivalent terms but religion as
institution is basically a cultural system for dealing with that which
transcends not only the individual but even the social entity as a whole.
B. The Dialectical Relation Between Religious Tradition and
Institutionalization
In light of the foregoing, we can see that religions as cultural systems
operate on two levels that are distinguishable but so intimately related
that they cannot be separated, namely, the religious tradition and the
institutionalization of that tradition in an organized system called a
religion or, in some cases, a denomination or a sect within a religious
tradition.
Religions are usually born in the intense, often mystical, revelatory
experience of a founding figure or group who encounters the divine,
the numinous, in some direct way that leads to personal life transfer-
8
mation, i.e., to spirituality in the developed sense. But if this revelation
experience and its characteristic spirituality is to give rise to a religious
tradition, is to have followers beyond the original founding figures,
the spirituality to which it gives birth must be somehow institutional-
ized as a religion (or analogous reality). The enlightenment of the
Buddha, the burning bush encounter of Moses, the "abba" experience
of Jesus gave rise respectively to Buddhism, judaism, and Christianity
as traditions lived by communities in some institutionalized form. And
it is precisely this institutional character that is both the safeguard and
the nemesis of religious traditions and their spiritualities.
The reason for institutionalization is clear. If the spirituality of a
religious tradition is to be made available to others, there has to be a
way of initiating people into the mystery that has been discovered by
or revealed to the founding figures and of sustaining them in living it.
By rites of initiation, inculcated teachings and practices, mentoring by
mature members, systems of rewards and punishments that encourage
correct belief and behavior, and properly celebrated rituals, the reli-
gious institution passes on the religious tradition and its spirituality,
thus sustaining not only its members but itself as a social reality. The
resulting cultural system governs the most important aspects of the life
of the group such as sexuality, kinship, worship, the distribution of
material goods, the exercise of social power and authority, and so on.
Its ultimate purpose, however, is not simply the fostering of social
meaning or the regulation of behavior in the society but the personal
development and even salvation, i.e., the spirituality, of the persons
who make up the society.
In this sense, institutionalization as an organized religion is what
makes spirituality as a daily experience of participation in a religious
tradition possible for the majority of people. When there is no institu-
tionalized religion, the religious tradition itself dissipates into a vague
and shapeless generalized ethos. It may have some kind of private sig-
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runcance ror mcrviauars or some KIno or PUDllC cercmoruai runction,
but there is no way for the participants to share it with one another or
embody it in public life. In our country, for example, the banishing of
all religions as institutions from public life under a (mis)interpretation
of the First Amendment has created a spiritual vacuum in which
shared beliefs and values cannot be called upon to shape public policy
or sanction private behavior. In the once-Christian Czech Republic,
the now widespread atheism is due to the aggressive suppression of
institutional religion during the Communist regime.
The danger, of course, in the institutionalization of any religious
tradition is that institutions often end up taking the place of the values
9
they were established to promote. Institutionalization of religion easily
leads to empty ritualism, hypocrisy, clericalism, corruption, abuse of
power, superstition, and other deformations familiar from the history
of religions and from which no religion is totally free. Many people
are so scandalized and disillusioned by these deformations that they
jettison all connection with institutionalized religion.
Such global rejection of religion involves a failure to distinguish
between the authentic and life-giving religious tradition and the spiri-
tuality to which it gives rise on the one hand, and its institutional
form on the other. It is a classic case of curing a headache by decap-
itation. The Christian tradition centered in Jesus the Christ has been
institutionalized in Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism,
Episcopalianism, and other denominations. Each of these churches has
carried the authentic tradition more or less successfully throughout its
history. Institutional Catholicism, for example, has had glorious moments,
such as the Second Vatican Council, and utterly despicable moments
such as the medieval Inquisition and its contemporary counterpart.
Although institutions are notoriously prone to corruption, non-
institutionalized spiritualities, especially those unrelated to any reli-
gious tradition, are prone to extremism and instability on the one
hand and to ghettoizing on the other. When people abandon the reli-
gious institution, even (or perhaps especially) if they manage to find a
small group of like-minded companions in exile, they are left without
the corrective criticism of an historically tested community and the
public scrutiny that any society focuses on recognized groups within
it. And they also lose the leverage that would enable them to influence
systemically either church or society." Such unaffiliated individuals or
groups have no access to the sustaining shared practice of a tradition
that has stood the test of time. They no longer enjoy the social
encouragement, the plausibility structures of a shared sociology of
belief, the clarity of a coherent theology, the formative mediation of
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a. UdUIUVI VI I11VIdI dllU
restraints, the wisdom of the great figures in the tradition.
However, it must be frankly acknowledged that the regular practice
of institutional religion is no guarantee at all of the internalization of the
tradition as personal spirituality, and faithful denominational member-
ship is no guarantee of voice or influence in either church or society.
In short, the institutionalization of religious tradition in organized
religions is a paradoxical blessing. It makes it possible to initiate people
into an authentic tradition of spirituality, gives them companions on
the journey and tested wisdom by which to live, and supports them in
times of suffering and personal instability. But it also provides a way
10
for people to be publicly correct and socially respectable without ever
becoming truly spiritual, and it often undermines personal faith by its
own infidelity to the tradition, sometimes exacerbated by cynical
official insistence that its worst offenses, for example anti-Sernitisrn or
the oppression and exclusion of women, are expressions of the divine
will. It can require uncommon faith and integrity to find in the
Christian tradition the resources for a genuine Catholic spirituality
by participating in the life of an institution that is often a very poor
vehicle of that tradition.
rv THE CONTEMPORARY CONFLICT BETWEEN
SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION
Having looked at the meanings of and the distinction between spiritu-
ality and religion that have grounded the age-old tension verified in
every religious tradition between organized religion and personal spiri-
tuality, we are in a position to appreciate the particularly acute version
of that conflict today. Because religion is not embedded in Western
culture but exists as a distinct institution we, unlike our forebears, can
objectify it, compare it to religions in other cultures, and thus prob-
lematize it in a way members of more traditional societies could not.
The alienation of many contemporary people who have abandoned
religion in favor of spirituality has a double source that was not opera-
tive in earlier times or more restricted societies. First, postmodernity
fosters the pursuit of idiosyncratic and nonreligious spirituality and,
second, ideological criticism reinforces the alienation of contemporary
seekers from institutionalized religion.
A. Postmoderniry and Non-Religious Spirituality
This is not the place, nor do I have the time, to give even a thumbnail
sketch of the emerging culture of postmodernity." Suffice it to say that
it differs from the modern culture in which most of today's adults
. rl h' . f. rl' l' rl . .. f
were raised uy Its ann-rounctationansm anu Its rejectIon 01. master nar-
ratives. This entails the repudiation of any kind of unitary worldview,
as well as a recognition that others are irreducibly different and cannot
be subsumed into our reality or perspective. A postmodern mentality
often involves the repudiation of any claims to normativity or non-
negotiable ultimacy by any institution or agency, a thoroughgoing rel-
ativism with regard to religion as well as other institutions and author-
ities, and a despair of genuine relationships with those whose reality is
really "other" than our own. Postmodernity, therefore, is characterized
by fragmentation of thought and experience which focuses attention
on the present moment, on immediate satisfaction, on what works for
11
me rather than on historical continuity, social consensus, or shared
hopes for a common future. In this foundationless, relativistic, and
alienated context there is, nevertheless, often a powerfully experienced
need for some focus of meaning, some source of direction and value.
The intense interest in spirituality today is no doubt partially an
expression of this need.
Religion, however, especially the type to which Christianity
belongs, presupposes a unitary world view whose master narrative
stretching from creation to the end of the world is ontologically based
and which makes claims to universal validity while promising an
eschatological reward for delayed personal gratification and sacrificial
social commitment. In other words, the Christian religion is intrinsi-
cally difficult to reconcile with a postmodern sensibility. By contrast, a
nonreligious spirituality is often very compatible with that sensibility
precisely because it is usually a privatized, idiosyncratic, personally
satisfying stance and practice that makes no doctrinal claims, imposes
no moral authority outside one's own conscience, creates no necessary
personal relationships or social responsibilities, and can be changed or
abandoned whenever it seems not to work for the practitioner. Com-
mitment, at least of any permanent kind, which involves both an
implied affirmation of personal subjectivity and a conviction about
cosmic objectivity, is easily circumvented by a spirituality that has no
institutional or community affiliation. Clearly such a spirituality is
much more compatible with a postmodern sensibility than the religion
of any church, especially Christianity.
B. Ideology Criticism of Institutional Religion
Exacerbating the postmodern challenge to institutional religion and
the corresponding attraction of nonreligious spirituality is the serious
contemporary ideological criticism of religion itself. Although it began
in the Enlightenment, this criticism is exacerbated today by the ecu-
1 -l' l' L I: -l
menlcal ann mterrengious experience cnaracteristic 01 postmouern
globalization and the general espousal in the first world of democratic
and participative principles of social organization. Three features of
institutionalized Western religion, especially Christianity, have become
increasingly alienating for contemporary seekers.
First, religions have been, historically, exclusive. Exclusivity can be
cultural and geographical, as was the case with the great religions of
the East before migration within, into, and beyond Asia became eom-
mon." It can also be tribal, as has been the case with Native American
or African religions whose adherents never understood or intended
their beliefs to extend beyond the tribe in which the religion was cul-
12
turally embedded. Or, exclusivity can be doctrinal and cultic as has
been the case with Islam, to some extent judaisrn (which is unique in
many ways), and especially Christianity and its subdivisions. As long
as the doctrinal and cultic exclusivity was implicit because there was
little or no contact with or conversion agenda toward outsiders, exclu-
sivity posed little problem. But in the cases of Christianity and Islam,
which felt called to convert the world to thematic adherence to their
religious faith and practice, it became both an agenda of domination
by the institution and a litmus test of acceptability for members.
There is no need to rehearse the tragic history of Christian persecution
of Jews and Muslims, cultural destruction by Christian missionaries,
the internecine wars among Christian denominations, the witch hunts
and inquisitions within Christian denominations, or the holy wars of
Islam. Religious exclusivity has been a source of hatred and violence,
which many contemporary believers find so scandalous that they can
no longer associate with the sources and purveyors of it.
Second, religions as institutions are traditionally ideological.
Membership involves acceptance of a particular set of beliefs and
obligatory practices and prohibitions. In many cases, fair-minded
moderns find some of the doctrines incredible and some of the prac-
tices arbitrary or oppressive and they claim the right to dissent.
Increasingly, educated people reject the kinds of controls on their
minds and behavior, imposed in the name of God, that such beliefs,
practices, and prohibitions represent. Repudiating membership in a
religious denomination means, for many people, shaking free of nar-
row-minded dogmatism and guilt-inducing morality for the sake of
spiritual breadth, autonomy of conscience, and psychological maturity.
Another aspect of institutional ideology that many people find
alienating is the official repudiation of non-Christian practices which
a believer might find attractive and spiritually helpful. As Christians
have encountered other religions and quasi-religions directly, rather
than purely academically, they have experienced the power of rituals
and practices from Native American sweat lodges to Zen meditation,
from African drumming to feminist nature rituals, from psychotherapy
and support groups to channeling and twelve-step programs. Eclec-
ticism, syncretism, and relativism, familiar to the postmodern mind
in the areas of art, science, medicine, business, and education, seem
natural enough also in the sphere of religion. But even serious scholars
of religion who are trying to mediate the inter-religious conversation
are often viewed, by church officials, with suspicion or even alarm
when they attempt to deal with the possible mutual enrichment of
religions." The simplest solution many see to the ideological narrow-
13
ness and protectionism of the religious institution is to resign from
official membership and pursue a personal spirituality within which
they can include whatever seems to be of value for the religious quest,
whatever the provenance of such resources.
A third problematic feature of institutionalized religions, especially
within the Christian tradition, is the clerical system. Ministers who
fulfill an organizational or service function in a religious group such
as sacralizing and recording births and deaths, witnessing marriages,
providing materials for devotional practices, or maintaining places of
worship or devotion may not pose a problem. But a sacerdotal clergy
that claims ontological superiority to ordinary believers and arrogates
to itself the exercise of an absolutely necessary intermediary role
between the believer and God is highly problematic for many people."
The egalitarian theory and practice of Western democratic societies
tends to recognize only acquired superiority based on competence or
achievement and to be highly suspicious of ascribed status such as that
of the clergy. Furthermore, it tends to resent monopoly of scarce
resources, whether material or spiritual, by any self-appointed agency,
especially if the monopoly is used to subordinate the nonparticipants."
Many find intuitively repugnant the claim by a small exclusive group
to control the access to God of the vast majority of believers. In a
denomination such as Catholicism, which not only has such a clerical
system but in which half the membership is barred from access to it
on the basis of gender, this repugnance can and has led to disaffiliation
from the religion altogether.
In short, the repudiation of institutional religion in favor of per-
sonal spirituality is, for many people, actually the repudiation of
denominational belonging rather than of religion as such or of religious
traditions in their entirety. It arises from a rejection, on the one hand,
of a medieval institutional model of the Church that is hardly com-
patible with either a sophisticated ecclesiology or a postmodern under-
l' r'" 1.1.1 1 1 r .1 l'
stanaIng or insutuuons, ana on tne otner nanu, or tne exciusrvism,
ideological legalism, and clericalism that often characterize institu-
tional religion. Nondenominational personal spirituality, by contrast,
seems to allow one to seek God, to grow personally, and to commit
oneself to the betterment of the world and society with freedom of
spirit and openness to all that is good and useful, whatever its source."
There can be no question that many such disaffiliated seekers are
admirable human beings and some may even exercise a prophetic
function by challenging the hypocrisy and control agenda of organized
religion and modeling, by the sheer goodness of their lives, a spiritual-
ity that seems more authentic. 25
14
V. MAKING A CASE FOR THE PARTNERSHIP OF RELIGION
AND SPIRITUALITY
Against the background of this acknowledgment that, at least for some
people, a purely private and even idiosyncratic spirituality may work, I
want to argue two points: first, that it is not an optimal formula for the
spiritual life of individuals or for the good of society; second, that it evades
the major challenge to unity that the Gospel addresses to us as human
beings and as Christians at this particular juncture in world history.
A. Religion as the Appropriate Context for Spirituality
First, I would suggest that religion is the optimal context for spiritual-
ity. The great religious traditions of the world are much more adequate
matrices for spiritual development and practice than personally con-
structed amalgams of beliefs and practices. In reality, such constructed
spiritualities are private religions and, while this construction might
seem like a creative form of postmodern bricolage, it is often quite
naive about how we humans function, individually and corporately.
I have already pointed out some of the shortcomings of nonaffiiated
spirituality for the individual. First, lacking roots in a tested wisdom
tradition or community of criticism, such spiritualities are not only
prone to remaking all the mistakes of the past but also, more seriously,
to extremism and fanaticism. And those who lack the personal intensity
to become extremists are likely to drift into spiritual lethargy in the
absence of a community of support and encouragement. Community,
although never perfect, is the nearly indispensable context for a wise
and sustained spirituality. Spirituality that lacks roots in a tradition,
although it may relate a person sporadically to a variety of like-minded
seekers, lacks the ongoing support and appropriate challenge that a
stable community of faith provides.
Second, personal spiritualities composed of a variety of intrin-
sically unrelated practices must draw on equally unrelated beliefs to
_
dilU l;;UIUC LilC pldl.-lll.-C. n ..ll;;lU Lile: l'J..lilU
that was imposed on believers in pre-conciliar Catholicism, is rightly
bemoaned but the consistency of a thoughtful and critical systematic
theology is a crucial structural support for the faith and morality that
are integral to any spirituality. For example, the belief that all humans
are made in the image and likeness of God and redeemed by Christ
grounds the moral imperative of absolute respect for others regardless
of age, race, gender, or class. Conversely, a general benevolence based
on the golden rule is unlikely to ground either costly respect for the
enemy or the active commitment to social justice of theologically
informed Christian faith.
15
My third, and most important, hesitation about the adequacy of
disaffiliated spirituality is that, while it may respond well to someone's
current felt needs, it has no past and no future. It is deprived of the
riches of an organic tradition that has developed over centuries in con-
frontation with historical challenges of all kinds. And even if it facili-
tates some major spiritual intuitions by the individual, it is intrinsically
incapable of contributing them to future generations except, in some
extraordinary cases, by way of a written testimony." By contrast, the
participant in a religious tradition can both profit from and criticize
all that has gone before and thus, at least potentially, can help hand on
to successive generations a wiser, more compassionate approach to the
universal human dilemmas and challenges. Privatized spirituality, like
the "social cocooning" in lifestyle enclaves that sociologists have iden-
tified as a major problem in contemporary American society," is at
least naively narcissistic. It implicitly defines spirituality as a private
pursuit for personal gain, even if that gain is socially committed.
Although the practitioner may be sincerely attempting to respond to a
reality, e.g., God, who transcends herself or himself, she or he remains
the sole arbiter of who God is and what God asks. The person accepts
as authoritative no challenge to personal blindness or selfishness from
sacred texts or community. There is certainly continuity, but there is
also a real difference, between the personal openness to challenge that
a sincere person but religiously unaffiliated person might try to main-
tain and the actual accountability that is required of the member of
a community.
In summary, the argument I am making for religion as the most
productive context for spirituality, for both the individual and the
community, is that the quest for God is too complex and too impor-
tant to be reduced to a private enterprise. It is, of course, crucial for
all of us to remain ever vigilant in guarding the liberty of our con-
science and the integrity of our practice against the deformations of
. . . 1 1" D VI" I' L 1 . " -I
msntunonat religiOn. vut wnue sitting liglltty to inStitutiOn we neeu
to immerse ourselves deeply in our religious tradition and the commu-
nity called church, which embodies and carries that tradition. Only
from within that community can we avail ourselves of its riches and
promote not only the integrity of the institution but also the fecun-
dity of the tradition itself.
B. Religious Commitment as the Instrument of Unity
As John Paul II, the Bishop of Rome, has said on a number of occa-
sions d propos of millennial observances, unity is a deep desire of the
heart of God and the ultimate vocation of the human race." The
16
creation story in Genesis, while it tells us nothing scientific about the
origin of humanity, forcefully expresses the theological truth that God
created humanity as one family. That family was split apart by sin but
Jesus' deepest desire, for which he gave his life, is that "all may be
one" as he and God are one (John 17:20-21). Ironically, and tragically,
one of the most powerful sources of division among humans is religion
itself, but in our day historical forces of all kinds are inviting us, chal-
lenging us, urging us to overcome religious division.
Globalization itself is involving us with our sisters and brothers of
every nation and ethnic group on earth. We know more about other
religions than any previous generation. Vatican II opened the windows
of the Church, not only toward other Christian denominations and
our Jewish and Islamic fellow monotheists, but even tentatively sug-
gested that we reach out across the divide between ourselves and the
other great world religions. But these positive forces toward religious
unity are counteracted by economic greed and political imperialism,
by ancient and recent ethnic hatreds, by fundamentalist extremism
and social intolerance, and even by ecclesiastical control agendas.
The path to reconciliation among religions is one we have so
recently begun to walk that we have no adequate theological founda-
tion upon which to proceed. Theologians of religion are struggling
with such issues as how to reconcile Christianity's absolute and exclu-
sive claims for Jesus Christ as savior of the world with the undeniable
salvific efficacy of religious traditions that predate Christianity by
millennia and had never heard of Jesus until at least the 16th century.
And the very institutional authority that launched Catholicism into
the inter-religious enterprise has brought under suspicion the best
theologians working on these problems and issued warnings against
the types of inter-religious practice that could open Catholics to the
riches of other traditions." Nevertheless, the last half of the 20th cen-
tury was marked by extraordinary efforts at inter-religious encounter
led by such remarkable individuals as Thomas }vlerton, Raimundo
Panikkar, Enomiya Lasalle, Bede Griffiths, Pascaline Coff, and others.
However rocky the road ahead, the movement toward reconciliation
among the world's religions must and will go forward.
One of the clear lessons these pioneers have taught us relates
directly to our topic, namely, that fruitful inter-religious dialogue is
unlikely to take place, at least at the beginning, at the level of abstract
doctrinal exchange but only in the arena of shared practice and reflec-
tion on common or analogous religious experience, in other words, in
the sphere of spirituality. However, the most serious participants in
these shared experiences have consistently insisted that only a person
17
deeply immersed in and faithful to her or his own tradition can make
a real contribution to this dialogue. Inter-religious dialogue is not pro-
moted by the well-meaning civility of vague nondenominationalism or
some attempt at a least common denominator faith or a rootless prac-
tice composed of unrelated elements from a variety of traditions. The
serious participants in inter-religious dialogue insist upon the differ-
ence between shallow syncretism and a gradually emerging organic
synthesis, between ungrounded relativism and generous inclusivity,
between non-normative eclecticism and thoughtful integration. They
know the difference between interior enrichment by the other and
extrinsicist accumulation of the exotic. To embody these distinctions
in actual practice and illuminate them by theoretical discourse that is
fully accountable to each tradition, genuinely open to the other, and
committed to a pluralistic unity which we cannot yet imagine, much
less describe in detail, is an enormously difficult undertaking. But
those with experience in this arena, those persons in different tradi-
tions who are recognized as holy within and outside their own com-
munities such as Bede Griffiths, the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Lao Tzu,
Abraham Heschel, and Black Elk, make it quite clear that only those
fully committed to their own tradition can both offer its riches to
others in a nonimperialistic and credible way and be flexible enough
to seriously entertain the challenging gift of the other.
Paul Lakeland, in his very enlightening work on postmodernism,
makes an important suggestion about how a Christian believer might
reconcile the total claim of her or his faith with the openness to other
faiths that is necessary for movement toward unity through honest
dialogue. He says that we must enter the arena of dialogue with our
own faith tradition behind rather than in front of US.
32
In other words,
we do not advance as onto a field of battle with our tradition as shield
against heresy or paganism or, worse yet, as a sword with which to
vanquish the other. Nor, however, do we check our faith tradition at
1 1 r 1 r 1 1- 1 1
tne door or tne conrerence room and enter as a relIgIOus taouta rasa.
Rather, we enter undefended, securely rooted in our Christian faith
tradition that we have internalized through study and practice as our
own living spirituality, knowing that our truth can never be ultimately
threatened by the truth of the other. What will surely be threatened
and must eventually be surrendered are the nonessentials we have
absolutized. Beyond that, much that we had never encountered or that
we had ruled out a priori because we thought we understood it will
probably be added to our picture of reality.
Although it would require another essay to develop this point, it
is worth mentioning here that Christianity, despite all the disgraceful
18
lapses in its 2,OOO-year history, has faithfully carried a unique and
crucial religious and spiritual insight that, in my opinion, is desper-
ately needed as an ingredient in any unity we humans can achieve.
The incarnation of God in Jesus and the sacramentalism it grounds are
at the heart of Christian faith. Herein lies the amazing revelation that
divinity is available to us in and through humanity, not by flight from
the coordinates of nature, materiality, and history. But as we have
cherished this insight for all humanity we have made less progress than
our Eastern counterparts in appreciating, intellectually or experientially,
divinity's absolute transcendence of all human categories, even being,
or primal peoples' sense of the sacredness of the natural cosmos. In
other words, we have something to offer and something to receive and
that is the basis of the ultimate form of human relationship, friendship.
Such friendship is based on God's relationship with us in Jesus: "I no
longer call you servants, but I have called you friends." Amazingly, as
the Christmas liturgy proclaims, only by accepting from us, in Jesus,
the gift of humanity could God offer us, in Christ, the gift of divinity.
This is the model of inter-religious exchange in which everyone gains
but no one remains unchanged.
VI. CONCLUSION
By way of summary and conclusion, I have tried to describe the religion-
spirituality problematic as it presents itself in the cultural context of
21st-century America, analyze spirituality and religion separately, and
suggest that they should be related not as strangers or rivals but as
partners. Such a relationship, analogous perhaps to the relationship
of spirit to body in the one person, is based on a recognition that
religion that is uninformed by lived spirituality is dead and often
deadly, while spirituality that lacks the structural and functional
resources of institutionalized religious tradition is rootless and often
fruitless for both the individual and society. Recognizing that the con-
. rI' 1 l' 1 1" r 1 1 1 1
temporary conruct oerween SpUltUallty ana rellglOn IS rueieu Dy tne
dynamics of postmodernity and ideology criticism and that there is
considerable validity in the critique of institutional religion, I have
nevertheless argued that religion as tradition is the most appropriate
context for the development of a healthy spirituality that is both per-
sonally and societally fruitful and that only the rootedness of religious
commitment in tradition can equip us for the kind of inter-religious
participation that will further the unity of the human family. The con-
flict between religion and spirituality arises primarily when religious
tradition is reduced to and equated with its institutionalization so that
the failures of the latter seem to invalidate the former. What we may
19
be learning from the struggles of our time in this arena is how to sit
lightly to institution even as we drink deeply of our tradition. The oft
repeated claim of contemporary believers that we do not merely
belong to the church but that we are church, well expresses this
insight. Christianity, even Catholicism, is not the institution but the
people of God. Institution plays an important role in carrying a tradi-
tion, but it does not own it or control it in any absolute way.
For those who follow Jesus, a faithful but dangerously critical Jew
who was finally executed by the connivance of religious and political
power elites, there is no guarantee against the distortions of religious
tradition by institutional agencies, but the latter are finally powerless to
undermine genuine spirituality. Like Jesus, whose religious horizons,
first defined by his Jewish experience, were broadened by his encounter
with a genuine and even superior faith outside Judaism (e.g., Matthew
16:21-28; Luke 17:18-19; esp. Matthew 8:10-13) but who continued
to believe that salvation is from the Jews (cf. John 4:22), we cannot
close our minds or hearts to the truth that comes to us from outside
our own tradition nor can we afford to repudiate our own tradition
that mediates salvation to us. Like Jesus, however, who encountered
God in the tradition of Israel whose psalms were on his lips as he
died, we finally commend our lives not to institutions but only into
the hands of God.
Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM
Jesuit School of Theology/
Graduate Theological Union
Berkeley, California
20
Endnotes
1. See Trends Table 2 (U.S. membership changes by denomination) in
Yearbook ofAmerican and Canadian Churches 1999, 67th ed., edited by
Eileen W Lindner, prepared and edited for the National Council of the
Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1999), 11.
2. The 1999 third national survey of American Roman Catholics was
summarized by the members of the research team who conducted it,
William V. D'Antonio, Dean R. Hoge, James D. Davidson, and Katherine
Meyer in National Catholic Reporter 36 (October 29, 1999): 11-20. The
poll is particularly significant because it follows, and thus allows compar-
isons with, the two previous surveys: the 1987 survey published as Ameri-
can Catholic Laity in a Changing Church (St. Louis, Mo.: Sheed and Ward,
1989) and the 1993 survey published as Laity, American and Catholic:
Transforming the Church(St. Louis, Mo.: Sheed and Ward, 1996). The
NCR captioned the issue ''American Catholics: Attachment to core beliefs
endures, link to institution weakens, NCR-Gallup survey reveals."
3. In 1995, 69 percent of those responding to a Gallup poll said they
were members of a church or synagogue, the same percentage as in 1980.
However, in 1995, 57 percent of those polled said they believed the influ-
ence of religion as a whole on American life was decreasing, compared to
39 percent in 1985 (George H. Gallup, Jr., Religion in America 1996
[Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Religion Research Center, 1996], 41, 54-55).
Interestingly, in a 1999 Gallup ethics poll, clergy were ranked sixth in
the top 10 among professions considered "most honest" by the U.S.
population (reported in Emerging Trends 21 [December 1999]: 3).
4. Examples of the range of writing considered "spiritual" is the new
series "Best Spiritual Writing," edited by Philip Zaleski, which includes
The Best Spiritual Writing 1998, introduction by Patricia Hampl
(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998) and The Best Spiritual
Writing 1999, introduction by Kathleen Norris (San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1999).
5. Diarmuid OMurchu, in Reclaiming Spirituality: A New Spiritual
Framework for Today's World (New York: Crossroad, 1998), describes the
conflict in the first two chapters. Although I have serious reservations
about his analysis and conclusions, his description is vivid and helpful.
6. Testimony to this phenomenon is the increasing momentum of the
21
movement of the World's Parliament of Religion. The first occurred in
Chicago in 1893; the second 100 years later in 1993 (also in Chicago); the
third six years later in 1999 in Capetown, South Africa, and plans call for
regular meetings in the future. Information on the Parliament of the
World's Religions (as it is now called) can be obtained from the Web site
www.cpwr.org.
7. An excellent example of such encounter in practice is chronicled in The
Gethsemani Encounter: A Dialogue on the Spiritual Lift by Buddhist and
Christian Monastics, edited by Donald W Mitchell and lames A. Wiseman
(New York: Continuum, 1998).
8. The journey of Bede Griffiths from Protestantism to Catholicism, into
religious life as a Benedictine, and finally to the Camaldolese and from
his very bourgeois English Christian background to immersion in
Hinduism is a striking contemporary example. It is recounted by Shirley
du Boulay in a fine work, Beyond the Darkness: A Biography ofBede
Griffiths (New York: Doubleday, 1998).
More familiar to many is the story of Thomas Merton who, over a
lifetime in the Cistercians, moved from a censorious and narrow-minded
arrogance toward not only non-Catholics but even nonmonastics to a
humble and intense involvement in the study of Eastern spiritual traditions,
especially Buddhism and Taoism, and died at an inter-faith meeting in
Bangkok. The story of that final journey is available in The Asian Journal
of Thomas Merton, edited from his original notebooks by Naomi Burton,
Patrick Hart, and lames Laughlin (New York: New Directions, 1973).
9. The fear among some members of the Catholic hierarchy about both
feminist spirituality and Eastern spiritualities seems to be evoked by the
freedom from clerical control that both manifest.
10. Peter Van Ness, "Introduction: Spirituality and the Secular Quest,"
in Spirituality and the Secular Quest, World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic
History of the Religious Quest, vol. 22, edited by Peter Van Ness (New
York: Crossroad, 1996), 5.
11. I proposed a slightly different version of this definition in "The Study
of Christian Spirituality: The Contours and Dynamics of a Discipline,"
Christian Spirituality Bulletin 1 (Spring 1998): 1,3-12.
12. Lucy Tinsely, The French Expression for Spirituality and Devotion:
A Semantic Study, Studies in Romance Languages and Literatures 47
22
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1953) was aug-
mented by Jean Leclercq in his article, "'Spiritualitas' ," Studi Medievali 3
(1963): 279-96, which he wrote in response to the study by Italian his-
torian Gustavo Vinay, "'Spiritualid.': Invito a una discussione," Studi
Medievali 2 (1961): 705-709. Leclercq's study, in turn, has been sum-
marized and augmented by Walter H. Principe in "Toward Defining
Spirituality," Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 12 (1983): 127-41.
13. This phenomenon is partly due to the decision by the general editor,
Ewert Cousins, of the Crossroad Series, World Spirituality, to include in
the series volumes on archaic spiritualities of Asia and Europe, ancient
Near Eastern spirituality, and classical Mediterranean spirituality. These
inclusions were justified by the working hypothesis of the series about the
nature of spirituality as the actualization of "that inner dimension of the
person called by certain traditions 'the spirit" (Preface to the series).
14. Thirty-nine members of the Heaven's Gate cult committed suicide at
a Southern California mansion in March 1997, in the belief that a space-
ship following the Hale-Bopp comet would take them to a galactic paradise.
15. For a good example of the overlapping and interaction of spirituali-
ties, both religious and nonreligious, in a kind of contemporary synthesis,
see Patricia M. Mische, "Toward a Global Spirituality," The Whole Earth
Papers, no. 16 (New York: Global Education Associates, 1982). Although
herself a Christian, Mische is proposing a kind of spirituality that could
be affirmed and practiced from within a number of religious traditions
and even by those who might be unwilling to admit any explicitly religious
motivation but are convinced of the sacredness of cosmic reality and the
vocation of all to the human quest.
16. I find most cogent the definition offered by Clifford Geertz in The
T It /""'I 1 I""Y 1 1 -r-i /'- T ~ T 1 T'\ -c f"It. _ "'" "\ f"It. r\. /"'\. ""11:
lnterpretatzon oJ Cultures: setectea }jssays (New YOrk: basic, ~ / j), ~ u ~ 1,
which says, "a religion is: (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) estab-
lish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men
[sic] by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and
(4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the
moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic."
17. One of reasons the civil rights movement had the leverage it did was
because of its rootedness in the black church. The same can be said for
the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, which was theologically
underwritten by the Kairos movement. The Kairos documents and related
23
materials are available in Robert McAfee Brown, ed., Kairos: Three
Prophetic Challenges to the Church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B.
Eerdmans, 1990).
18. An excellent introduction to the sources and ethos of the postmodern
sensibility is Paul Lakeland, Postmodernity: Christian Identity in a Frag-
mented Age (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997).
19. The spread of Buddhism, first within Asia and then beyond, is a
remarkable example of the inculturation of a culturally rooted tradition in
new environments. An accessible account is available in Robert C. Lester,
"Buddhism: The Path to Nirvana," in Religious Traditions ofthe World,
edited by H. Byron Earhart (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993),
847-971.
20. There has been historically and continues to be to some extent an ethnic
and even a quasi-national character to Judaism that has no real parallel in
other religious traditions. However, since conversion to judaism is possi-
ble, the biological, ethnic, and/or national features are not absolutes.
21. The recent warning about the writings of Anthony de Mello by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Notification on Positions of
Father Anthony de Mello," with a cover letter by Cardinal Ratzinger seek-
ing the banning of his books (available in Origins 28 (1998): 211-14),
and the current investigation of the careful Gregorian University theolo-
gian of religions, Jacques Depuis, (especially of his treatise, Toward a
Christian Theology ofReligious Pluralism [Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1997])
are examples of such concern.
22. Both Michel Foucault in The History ofSexuality, vol. 1, translated by
Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1978) and Hannah Arendt in The
TT ." t r , /1'1' TT" ". r 1'1 " n 'Al'"O\ 1
riurnan Conattion \'-.-lllcago: un1verslLY or '-.-lllcago r ress, 1:1::>0) exposea
the link between control of divine forgiveness and control of society.
More recently, A. W Richard Sipe, in Sex, Priest, and Power: Anatomy ofa
Crisis (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1995), 98-100, has discussed the same
dynamic, recalling Friedrich Nietzsche's analysis and connecting the sexual
scandals that have undermined the credibility of the clergy to the decline
of sacramental confession through which such power to control access to
divine forgiveness has traditionally been exercised.
23. Leonardo Boff, in Church, Charism, and Power: Liberation Theology
and the Institutional Church, translated by John W Diercksmeier (New
24
York: Crossroad, 1985) applied the liberationist analysis of monopoly of
material resources to what he called the monopoly of symbolic resources
through the sacerdotal control of the sacramental system.
24. Philippians 4:8 seems to encourage such an open-minded approach to
religious matters among Christians.
25. Two examples of this function, both ambiguous but striking, are the
late theologian, Charles Davis, who not only resigned from the clergy but
disaffiliated from the Roman Catholic Church shortly after Vatican II
over the issue of papal power, and Mary Daly, the self-proclaimed post-
Christian feminist philosopher-theologian who became convinced that the
sexism of the Church is irremediable and salvation will have to come
from a society of women.
26. Ronald Rolheiser in his well-received book on contemporary spiritual-
ity, The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality (New York:
Doubleday, 1999), explores the importance and character of community
as a dimension of authentic Christian spirituality in chapter 6, "A
Spirituality of Ecclesiology," pp. 111-140.
27. Examples of such documents from spiritual pioneers are the writings
of Simone Weil (see Waitingfor God [New York: Harper & Row, 1973]),
who actually espoused the Catholic Christian tradition but never accepted
baptism because of her need to remain in solidarity with those outside the
Church and of Etty Hillesum (see An Interrupted Life: The Diaries ofEtty
Hillesum 1941-1943 [New York: Washington Square Press, 1983] and
Lettersfrom Westerbork, translated by Arnold J. Pomerans [London: Grafton,
1988]) who was culturally Jewish and died in Auschwitz because of her
choice to remain in solidarity with her people but whose stunning religious
faith and extraordinary spirituality were never embodied in institutional
religious affiliation. Both of these women, however, were deeply and widely
read in religion and philosophy, involved with spiritual guides who were
mediators of the riches of tradition, and inheritors through their families
and friends of traditional religious resources. Both practiced rigorously
the traditional disciplines of prayer, fasting, and social commitment.
28. See Robert Bellah, et al., Habits ofthe Heart: Individualism and
Commitment in American Life (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California
Press, 1985), 71-75.
29. A particularly eloquent discussion of this topic, particularly in relation
25
to Christian ecumenism, is the encyclical Ut Unum Sint, available in
English in Origins 25 (1995): 49-55.
30. The Catholic Theological Society of America devoted its 1993 annual
convention to discussion of this topic. See Proceedings ofthe Forty-Eighth
Annual Convention (Santa Clara, Calif.: CTSA, 1993).
31. "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of
Christian Meditation," issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, Origins 19 (1989): 492-98.
32. See Lakeland, Postmodernism, ch. 3, pp. 87-113.
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